Fish Scale

After a few ventures in my own backyard with nothing but junk, and a trip down to Cherry Hill with limited finds, I was pretty desperate to find something good; something interesting.

My mom lives a few blocks away and said I can hunt in her yard any time. “Really? You do know I have to DIG up anything I detect, right?” After some hesitation of this obvious yet not-so-obvious fact, she still agreed.

Short on time one day I headed over. As I set up my gear she watched me from above from her deck: “I just want to see what you do.” Sigh. She’s going to see me fail miserably. Thirty seconds into my hunt I got a hit. A good hit, but again, figured it would just be aluminum, or tin foil which for some reason seems like a popular thing people bury.

“Hear that? I go over it a few times and if it’s a consistent hit, I’ll dig. First I have to pinpoint the right spot.”

After my demo I said, “It says it’s shallow. Two inches or so.”

On shallow detections like this, I try my Pro Pointer before I dig, as things sometimes don’t require a big first plug. And this method worked. It was real close to the surface. I dug a tiny plug and didn’t see anything, but the Pro Pointer did. Narrowing it down I saw a small, but ROUND object. Very thin and light. “I think it’s silver.”

After further investigation, I noticed it was Canadian. Hmm… weird. Then I saw a date… 18-something. 18??? Really?? I didn’t want to rub it too much but I was excited. 18…. 91? Could it be? I’ll clean and check later.

The rest of my short hunt (another 20 minutes) scored me two modern pennies and a bunch of junk. But still, I got a good find.

After a mild soapy water soak, I was able to confirm the 1891 date. And then the online search began to determine what exactly the coin was. So, here she is in all her seated glory!